This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a
large number of people from all walks of life--workers, peasants, students, artists and
dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the
women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and
thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple
of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw
unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy
soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and
actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very
moving to me--the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays
while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their
factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of
Vietnam--these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but
who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation,
offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by.
The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against
cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic
destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and
the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the
American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam
Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the
young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly--and I pressed my cheek
against hers--I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is
America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been
in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people;
he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United
States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the
countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution
to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to
resist.

I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their
parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few
schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their
own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created--being
committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own
schools--the children learning, literacy--illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more
prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words,
the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own
lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign
invaders--and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French
colonialism--I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way,
shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard
Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and
particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.